One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression

Rating:
Summary: Great human insights into depression conditions
Review: Lorena Hickok, special investigator for Harry Hopkins, traveled the country reporting on the human dimension of life during the Depression, while at the same time evaluating the impact of New Deal policies and programs and support for Roosevelt. Her reports read like letters, honest and open, down to earth. She talked to governors, tenant farmers, labor leaders, children working in the fields, social workers, down and out transients, former press colleagues, people on the edge of survival - and everyone in between. Hickok struggles with issues of white collar workers on relief vs the working class and chronically poor. Her ignorance on race issues is apparent when visiting the South and Southwest, but reading these reports is also instructive on attitudes of the times. I picked up this book because I was interested in the life of Lorena Hickok, who was the AP's highest paid female reporter before taking the job with Hopkins, and intimate friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. What I got was a window into her world, but much more than that. Highly recommended for those interested in the US in the 1930s, the Depression years, and for fans of Hick.